NOT SO GRACIOUS: Jordan Crawford (second from left) has a laugh as Carmelo Anthony and Jason Kidd walk off the court following last night’s 92-86 Knicks loss to the Celtics in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series. Photo: N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg

NOT SO GRACIOUS: Jordan Crawford (second from left) has a laugh as Carmelo Anthony and Jason Kidd walk off the court following last night’s 92-86 Knicks loss to the Celtics in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series. (Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post)

NOT SO GRACIOUS: Jordan Crawford (second from left) has a laugh as Carmelo Anthony and Jason Kidd walk off the court following last night’s 92-86 Knicks loss to the Celtics in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series. (
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For a couple of minutes, anyway, the Knicks were allowed to think they were every bit as good, every bit as accomplished, as they believe themselves to be. They came out early and they zoomed past the Celtics, and before anyone at Madison Square Garden was comfortably seated the score was 11-0 and they were on their feet instead, anticipating a coronation.

Back in the Knicks’ locker room, a string of black suits was hung with care in the players’ stalls. This could simply have been a fashion statement, a sartorial expression of unity. Except it came with a purpose: The Knicks weren’t here simply to deliver a knockout punch, but a message.

These were their funeral outfits.

Yes. That’s as galling as it sounds, especially given the events in Boston 17 days ago. Nice. Very classy.

This is a franchise that hasn’t won a playoff series in 13 years or a title in 40, a team that has yet to win THIS playoff series even as the players allowed their minds to drift forward to Atlanta, to Indiana, even to Miami. And they were preparing a Viking funeral for the Celtics before actually, you know, eliminating them.

Amazing. Just amazing.

“We were going to a funeral,” said J.R. Smith, “but it looks like we got buried.”

Astonishing: Smith is now the voice of reason on this team. What kind of crazy basketball looking glass has everyone walked through?

The Celtics won the game, of course, 92-86, because instead of taking care of business, instead of simply closing out this series, the Knicks have placed a priority on settling scores and righting slights, many of them offered up by a veteran Celtics chatterbox named Jason Terry. One of the red flags attached to this series from the very start was the belief the Celtics could play with the Knicks’ psyche, get in their heads, wreck their emotional balance.

If this happened, we assumed, it would be thanks to Kevin Garnett or Paul Pierce.

Terry? Terry had a terrible year, and an invisible first three games of this series, right until the moment he started chirping and elbowing and loudly making his presence felt at the end of Game 3. Smith was weak enough to accept Terry’s invitation to scuffle, threw an elbow, and got himself suspended. Terry heated up in Game 4 and carried that over to last night.

So the series returns to Boston, it gets a sixth game, it invites all manner of comparison to what Boston did to New York on a couple of baseball diamonds nine Octobers ago. And it still shouldn’t matter: The Knicks are still the better team, should still be the betting favorite.

But that’s assuming they choose to focus exclusively on the basketball tomorrow night. No more funeral garb. No more getting roped into ugliness like the game-ending kerfuffle involving Ray Felton, Carmelo Anthony and Jordan Crawford which, based on some raw video evidence, sure seems like an extension of the subject broached the last time the Celtics tried to mess with Melo.

It’s working, too, by the way. Game 4’s miseries bled into Game 5, and even before he banged up his shoulder Anthony was badly out of sorts last night.

“We knew,” Melo said, “that this series wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.”

Maybe two weeks ago the Knicks would have signed up for being up 3-2 after five, with two shots to close out the Celtics. Not now. Not with two shots wasted already. Halfway to history. Halfway to ignominy.

“I think they had more urgency than we did tonight,” Kenyon Martin said. “It showed.”

It was Martin’s idea, the funeral suits, which is disappointing on a number of levels, because Martin has been roundly credited with adding some championship-level pedigree and an adult voice to that locker room. Of course, the lack of urgency is just as difficult to come to terms with.

“We still control our own destiny,” said Mike Woodson, and even the Knicks coach seemed like he was already mentally advanced to the second round, talking before the game about possible practice plans to get Amar’s Stoudemire up to speed and ready to play.

He’s right, they do, if they walk into TD Garden as they have three times this year — once in this series — and beat the Celtics on their home parquet, last night’s ugliness will merely be a footnote. If not? Well, Woodson has spoken ad nauseum about how important it was for the Knicks to earn home-court advantage.

Now his team is 48 minutes away from learning just how critical it really was.